


17/20

by trashcanbarbie



Series: unconnected klaroline drabbles [5]
Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Caroline Forbes-centric, Domestic Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson, F/M, Klaus Mikaelson Has A Heart, Minor Caroline Forbes/Tyler Lockwood, Pining Klaus Mikaelson, Vampire Caroline Forbes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28607748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashcanbarbie/pseuds/trashcanbarbie
Summary: “Do you think the others will ever understand?” Caroline whispers. He’s resting right right against her neck now, and she swears she can feel his fangs pressing into her neck, into that delicate skin. She wants him to bite, she does. She's bitten him, drunk from him. He's never from her, and it feels like a debt that should be repaid.She feels his smile, his exhale against her skin. "I don't even understand, love, so how could they have a hope?"
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson, Caroline Forbes/Tyler Lockwood
Series: unconnected klaroline drabbles [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2069625
Comments: 2
Kudos: 42





	17/20

“Caroline,” he whispers, that kind of loud whisper. She opens her eyes and looks for him though the sleepy, warm dark. There he is, silhouetted against the window.

She swallows, clears her throat, “Klaus?” she asks, voice quiet. Not to wake her mother. To save face if she's dreaming. 

She _hears_ his grin from across to the room, that victorious exhale edging on a chuckle. She knows it too well. “That's me, love,” he draws, and steps closer to her.

Caroline sits up in bed, her old, blush-pink cami slipping off one pale, round shoulder. “Hi,” she murmurs, smiling at him. She feels so teenage and alive and like the main character when he comes.

“Hi,” he whispers back, almost fond.

—

He's in bed with her, in her tiny little single, and they both don't fit — half of Caroline's torso is hanging off the side, and he only barely fits. But they don't say anything, he doesn't suggest they sit up, or move, or that he leaves, and neither does she.

“Do you feel guilty?” he asks her, murmuring it into the curve of her neck, "about...being who we are. What we do.”

Caroline considers it, and pushes closer to him, her sleep shorts rising up her thighs. “Sometimes. Most of the time.” He takes her answer, ruminates on it. She feels his eyelashes against her skin as he blinks. “Do you?” she asks him, and he probably knows the answer.

He hums, the vibrations travel through her veins, and muscle and fat, right down into her bone marrow and back out again. It makes her feel so delightfully whole. “I've lived a long, long time, Caroline. That's a lot to feel guilty about.”

“No, then?” she supposes, and looks at her old cheer trophies still on the shelf, like they matter.

He shakes his head wordlessly. “Didn't say that.”

They stay silent again, for a few moments pulled together into many. Caroline counts his heartbeats, and then her mom’s in the other room.

“What would all your friends do if they knew I was here?” he asks her, a hand skating up her back, landing between her shoulder blades.

She exhales her answer over his shoulder, into his ear. She’s nearly laughing when she says it, but not quite. “Tyler would freak out, that's for sure.”

He hums, the rumble vibrating through her again. “Ah yes, Tyler.”

“Tyler,” she repeats, simply. Two syllables and two vowels, three consonants. It means more the alphabet soup of it's letters.

“How is he?” Klaus asks, and he sounds both haughty and bored and dangerous.

She shrugs, and it only disturbs their balance for a moment, “Alive.”

He hums, high and low, and it vibrates through her again. “I see”

—

“Do you think the others will ever understand?” Caroline whispers. He’s resting right _right_ against her neck now, and she swears she can feel his fangs pressing into her throat, into that delicate skin. She wants him to bite, she does. She's bitten him, drunk from him, but he's never from her, and it feels like a debt that should be repaid.

She feels his smile, his exhale against her skin. "I don't even understand, love, so how could they have a hope?" 

—

“It's getting early,” he whispers. It is. The sky is getting lighter, she can see it on the wall. Soon the birds will be up and so will her mother and the whole world, and this little place they've carved out of the darkness will shrink and shrink until the sun breaks over the horizon and there's nothing left.

“Yeah,” she whispers back, but he doesn't move.

She hears her mothers alarm ring, and her groan as she wakes. She doesn't say anything at all, and neither does he. They just listen. 

Her mother’s light flicks on, and they both listen to the shower turn on, off and doors bang, and breakfast being made and soon she will appear at her daughters doorway in her sheriff's uniform ready for work to wake her sleeping, dutiful daughter up to say goodbye.

“You should go,” Caroline makes herself say.

“Yes,” he agrees, and sits up until she aches the loss of him. “Quickly, at that,” he murmurs, turning his head to the sky outside the window 

He gets up, stretches, Caroline feels emotion fill her throat, suddenly, as she watches him.

“Why does this feel like goodbye?” she asks, her voice uneven and lumpy with tears she tries to fight back. She's a vampire. She's got no emotion at all, just cold unfeeling bloodsucking desire. Maybe all that's just a big fat lie. Maybe she's more human than she's ever been.

He looks at her, and she so desperately wants to take his face in her hands and shake him until he stays in her cramped bed forever. “Maybe it is,” he says, and it's gentle. Caroline hasn't been alive nearly as long as him. For him, a few years feel like blinking. For her, it's her lifetime. “For now,” he adds after it, perhaps to soften the blow, and he reaches out, trails a finger up her neck and to her check, where the rest of his hand joins. She leans into his palm and he says, “maybe just for now.”

“I--I’ll wait for you,” she promises, thickly.

He laughs, and it's too loud, but she doesn't care. “Caroline, if I asked that of you, you'd resent me forever, and you'd never actually do it.”

Hey,” she says softly, and she's offended, genuinely offended.

He shrugs, like it's not something to be offended by (it probably isn't) and says, “I wouldn't either. I think it’s fair.”

She nods, grieves, then murmurs, looking away from him, "You might be right.”

“Hey, experience," he chuckles, and when she looks up he's smiling at her, not mockingly or meanly, softly smiling. Not the kind of smile a murderous original vampire/hybrid should be giving an enemy. But he is. And Caroline's only looking back sadly.

"Don't you ever forget me," Caroline asks, her voice about to break.

He shakes his head. "As if I could, Caroline. Of all things I've seen, you are by far the most radiant." She closes her eyes a moment, savoring those words. He laughs, low. "Hasn't anyone ever told you that?"

"No," she answers, and opens her eyes to the handsome outline of him, warm and sharp when he wants, soft when he wants, too.

"Hm. A mistake on their part, I'm sure."

She smiles shyly, twisting her hands together as she savors the feel of praise, then reality slams into her like a truck, and she needs him to go. She wants to be alone, she can hardly stand it, her skin is crawling, she needs him to go. He's Klaus, and she's Caroline. They shouldn't be here like this. Not now, not ever. He's never stayed this long, anyway. "My mom will be in soon. You shouldn't be here."

"No, but that never stops us, does it?" He smiles, making towards the door, intending to go out through the house.

“Go out the window,” she interrupts. Her mom might hear, or a neighbor will see him, or one of her friends is pulling up right now and will see Klaus step out of her house and get suspicious, and Caroline really doesn't want to deal with the scandal.

He stops short, looks at her like he's expecting her to laugh and say, _ha! I'm joking, got you!_ but she doesn't, at all, so he just shakes his head, sighs, murmurs, “God, this is very teenage,” under his breath and steps closer to the window.

She smiles hard, “I am seventeen.” It doesn't feel like an end, anymore. It feels a little better. A little happier. Her skin's stopped crawling. 

He stops, and turns to look at her, leaning on the wall. “I was twenty,” he tells her, quietly, like it means something.

She smiles sadly, and wishes to reach out, touch him, but that would shatter the tentative end they've come to, as they need to. “I wish I could get to twenty.”

He looks away, murmurs. “You will.”

She shakes her head, “Not really. I'm stuck in a filer year.”

She scoffs at her foolishness, and says, “Caroline, love, seventeen is the most wonderful year to be stuck in I can think of." It sounds honest, but she’ll never believe him.

“You're just saying that,” she sighs, desolate.

He chuckles at her pout, “Yes. Doesn't mean it's not true.”

“You should go,” she says again, to stop the feeling in her chest, like roaring wind and sea and earth all expanding larger and larger under her ribs until they burst, all telling her not to do it, to grab him and hold on with both hands.

He opens her window with a quiet creak. The cold breeze disrupts their warmth still lingering in her bed. He sits on the sill for a moment before vaulting off with incredible ease.

He lands on the grass and looks up at her for a second, and there's something in his face Caroline's never seen before, but she's always wanted to. It's the look the boys give Elena, devoted and willing -- and in _love_. No one ever gives her that. Caroline's never the girl the boys love, but he does.

But then he's gone.

“Get up, Caroline!" her mom yells, banging at her door as she comes inside.

“I'm up,” Caroline calls, facing away from the door, still staring out the window.

“Oh,” Liz says. Usually Caroline's still fast asleep. Caroline half turns and watches her mother hesitate, her face torn, wondering if she should question it. “Honey, are you okay?”

“Yeah, mom,” Caroline lies, and doesn't look at her.

—

He never comes back, but Caroline still wakes up early and closes her eyes and wishes he’ll come knocking on the window, grinning through it, calling her _love_ and _Caroline_ and _dear_ as the sky lightens behind him.

But he never does.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! I really enjoyed this one!
> 
> xx
> 
> leave a coment/kudos


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